I'm a semi-technical UX designer looking for a technical solution on a topic where none of our developers are fully informed, so bear with me.
Our organization has multiple iOS apps, each of which does somewhat different things. I'd like to create a link between two of these apps such that an interaction in one app will open the other app and take it to a specific state.
If these were web applications, we could easily do this via a simple link. Is such a thing possible in the iOS world? And if so, without getting deep into the weeds on the technical details, can you point me in the general direction of the technical approach we would want to take so I can have our developers start researching further?
You probably want to forward your developers onto Apple's documentation on "Inter-app communication":
And most likely you'll want to use an app url scheme:
A URL scheme lets you communicate with other apps through a protocol that you define. To communicate with an app that implements such a scheme, you must create an appropriately formatted URL and ask the system to open it. To implement support for a custom scheme, you must declare support for the scheme and handle incoming URLs that use the scheme.
Related
I want let users view the Weight section of Apple's Health app to allow them to see detailed data, etc. I manage to open the Health app via the URL scheme x-apple-health://, but I would like to send them directly to the right place, e.g. x-apple-health://HealthData/measurements/Weight. I have had no success after trying different paths that made some sense.
Anyone has a reference on this?
Apple has not documented the x-apple-health:// scheme for use by apps. Attempting to use it is like using SPI - even if you find something that works now, it is likely to break in a future version of iOS. You should file a Radar with Apple to request an API for this purpose.
Here is the Workflow Action. It seems that Workflow can send a file to another APP directily. Any ideas?
The normal way to send a file to another APP is using Share Extension, but Workflow APP could send it directily without showing the Action Sheet and selecting an APP.
If you set an action like this and run your workflow, it just open the selected APP and that APP got the file.
So I just want to know is there any way to make it happen? Or it just a secret API of iOS and Workflow just use it because of the purchase?
Your exact question needs to be stated more clearly (e.g. exactly WHAT you are trying to accomplish instead of just "integrate"). To get you started, some quick info:
At my last check, Workflow integrates with apps in a few main ways:
1) Via the iOS sharing/share-sheet interface.
2) Built-in support for the app within Workflow itself.
3) (of course, Workflow can also leverage Callback URI's of other apps to integrate with them like any other app can.)
If you want to have direct, built-in support from Workflow, the Workflow team itself must add the support into the Workflow app. This is easier for them (and others) if your app exposes a proper API with functions that allow direct integration.
Going into this further is too broad of a topic for a quick answer. I hope this helps some.
I would like to have a link on my mobile website that once clicked from an iOS device, it will open up the Apple Wallet app.
I know there are some questions about this subject when it comes to an app that I built, but since this is not the case here, I'm not sure what is the right approach. I'm also aware of Brnach.io, but again, I think this solution is for an app I own, and I'm not sure how I can implement it for apps created by Apple (or other 3rd party developers) and specifically Apple Wallet (for example: how do I get the app ID?).
I know Universal Links might also be an option but I've read that I can't use an automated redirect with them (which I will need to do too)
Use this in your URL- shoebox://
To simply open the Wallet app you can use the wallet:// deeplnk, I'm also trying to figure out how to open specific passes.
I am stuck somewhere. My client wants me to develop an application that has a dedicated icon over other applications as well. For example – If I have an ecommerce application opened in my iPhone, there should be an icon over that application through which I can take screenshot and add the image to my application. I know this is possible in android, but is it possible in iOS as well, if yes then how?? Also refer the image attached for more clarification.
Share data between two applications
Historically, the iPhone has tried to prevent data sharing between apps. The idea was that if you couldn't get at another app's data, you couldn't do anything bad to that app.
In recent releases of IOS, they've loosened that up a bit. For example, the iOS programming guide now has a section on passing data between apps by having one app claim a certain URL prefix, and then having other apps reference that URL. So, perhaps you set your event app to answer "event://" URLs the same way that a webserver answers for "http://" URLs.
Have a peek under "Implementing Custom URL Schemes".
I am trying to implement deeplinking in iOS.
After a little research i came to know the if we need to navigate to our app(if installed) on click of a link, we need to work on server side also.
Is there anyway to work out this without server side dependency?
The old-fashioned approach to deep linking used custom URI schemes, which didn't require any server-side implementation. These don't work well anymore. Apple introduced Universal Links in iOS 9, which do require a server-side update.
If you don't want to deal with all the implementation details, check out Branch.io (full disclosure: I'm on the Branch team). It's a free service that takes care of all this without any server requirements from you.
There are two ways to link to your app:
Make iOS redirect URLs of your website to your app (Universal Links)
For example http://maps.apple.com/?q=1+Infinite+Loop opens the Maps App and YouTube-Links redirect to the YouTube-App, if it is installed.
This requires some server-side configuration.
I have not worked with Universal Links yet, so I can just propose you to read this document by Apple about this topic.
Use a custom URL scheme
If you don't want to do anything on your server, you need to use a custom URL-scheme like myapp://this/is/a/url